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Unobscured Vision 2,665

The issue is perception. Elon is representative of the various companies that he owns and operates. He's the face. He's held to a different standard of behavior and demeanor than most. All Upper Management is; the same way that Government Officials, members of the Military, etc. are.

I get that Elon is going to do things "the Elon way". Really I do -- and I even support that 99% of the time -- and having watched him "do the deed" it wasn't that bad. No inhaling, he just tried it and made a face, handed it back. And in California it's perfectly legal to consume cannabis, so no law was broken. The problem is perception and the standards that he's held to all the time.

Personally I think it was ill-advised and spur-of-the-moment. Am I going to bash the guy for it? Certainly not. The next question is what Elon does next. What I'd like to see is no backtracking, no "I'm gonna get rehab", no artificial platitudes. The guy made a bad decision that turned out to bite him in the ass. He's human after all. He did it -- now he can simply own it and move forward.

Unfortunately what is gonna sting is the business fallout, and it looks like that's happening already. Chances are there will be more fallout down the road.

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DocM 16,485

Management changes were somewhat expected, especially Gaby Toledano who's been on family leave.

Company Update

September 7, 2018

The following email was just sent to Tesla employees:

First, I’d like to thank you for your incredible efforts and contribution as we enter the final few weeks of this quarter. This is a very exciting time for Tesla, to say the least, and you are the reason for the tremendous progress we’ve made in a relatively short period of time. It is easy to forget that our company was almost unknown 10 years ago and didn’t even exist until after the start of the 21st century!

We are about to have the most amazing quarter in our history, building and delivering more than twice as many cars as we did last quarter. For a while, there will be a lot of fuss and noise in the media. Just ignore them. Results are what matter and we are creating the most mind-blowing growth in the history of the automotive industry. Even the Ford Model T, which held the world record for the fastest growing car in history, didn’t grow as fast in sales or production as the Model 3.

Moreover, we also have the most exciting new product lineup of any company in the world. There is the Model Y, the Tesla (pickup) Truck, the Semi and the new Roadster. Then there is the Solar Roof, which is spooling up in production, and continued advancements in Powerwall and Powerpack. And that’s just what people know about …

To help achieve our goals, after discussing this in-depth with the Tesla board of directors and executive staff over the past several weeks, I am excited to announce a number of management changes:

Jerome Guillen has been promoted to President, Automotive, reporting directly to me. In his new role, Jerome will oversee all automotive operations and program management, as well as coordinate our extensive automotive supply chain. Jerome has made major contributions and acquired deep knowledge of Tesla’s operations over the past eight years at our company, from being the first Model S Program Manager to managing all vehicle programs, then all vehicle engineering and worldwide sales & service. Recently, Jerome played a critical role in ramping Model 3 production, leading what almost all thought was impossible: creation of an entire high-volume General Assembly line for Model 3 in a matter of weeks. Before coming to Tesla, Jerome was responsible for creating and running the most successful semi truck program in history at Daimler’s Freightliner division.

Kevin Kassekert has been promoted to VP of People and Places, with responsibility for Human Resources, Facilities, Construction, and Infrastructure Development. Kevin has been with Tesla for 6 years and was previously VP, Infrastructure Development. Kevin led the construction and development of our Gigafactory in Nevada, turning what was a pile of rocks in the Sierra Nevada mountains into a factory employing 12 thousand people with greater output than the entire rest of the world’s battery factories combined, in roughly three years. That is insanely badass. Prior to joining Tesla, Kevin engineered and built multi-billion dollar production plants in the semiconductor industry. As many of you know, Tesla’s Chief People Officer Gaby Toledano has been on leave for a few months to spend more time with her family and has decided to continue doing so for personal reasons. She’s been amazing and I’m very grateful for everything she’s done for Tesla.

Chris Lister joined Tesla last year and was key to solving our production problems at the Gigafactory and ramping Model 3 production. He is being promoted to VP, Gigafactory Operations. In this role, he leads our production and manufacturing engineering at Giga. Before Tesla, Chris ran several ultra high volume factories at PepsiCo.

Felicia Mayo, Sr. HR Director and head of our Diversity and Inclusion program, has been promoted to VP, reporting to both Kevin and me. Felicia has done great work promoting the importance of having one of the most diverse workforces in the world and ensuring fairness across hundreds of roles and Tesla operations in over 50 countries. She previously worked in senior HR roles at PwC and Oracle, and, most recently was Vice President, Global Talent Acquisition and Diversity for Juniper Networks.

Laurie Shelby, Tesla’s VP, Environmental, Health and Safety (EHS) will also report directly to me. Your safety and just generally making sure that you love coming to work is extremely important, which is why EHS will report directly to me. We are working hardcore on having the safest (and most fun) work environment in the automotive industry by far. Laurie came to Tesla last year after a 25+ year career at Alcoa, where she made tremendous progress in workplace safety. Since joining, she has already overseen a reduction in our employee injury rate, as well as major improvements in our EHS program.

Cindy Nicola, VP of Global Recruiting, will report to both Kevin and me. Cindy has overseen the company’s global recruiting efforts since 2015, bringing on tens of thousands of highly talented people. Prior to Tesla, Cindy led worldwide Corporate Recruiting at Apple, and before that was VP, Global Talent Acquisition at Electronic Arts.

Tesla Inc. Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk was accused by the Securities and Exchange Commission of misleading investors when he tweeted that he had funding lined up to take the company private.

The agency said Musk fabricated the claim in his August tweet, which sent Tesla shares higher.

“In truth and in fact, Musk had not even discussed, much less confirmed, key deal terms, including price, with any potential funding source,” the SEC said in complaint filed Thursday in Manhattan federal court, less than two months after Musk’s tweet.

The suit seeks an order from a judge barring Musk from serving as an officer or director of a public company, a request often made in SEC lawsuits, as well as unspecified monetary penalties.

Shares fell about 10 percent in after-hour trading on news of the lawsuit. The company, which wasn’t sued, and an attorney for Musk didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment. The SEC has scheduled a press conference for 5 p.m.

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Jim K 13,210

SEC settles charges with Tesla's Elon Musk, will remain as CEO but relinquish chairman role and pay stiff fine

The SEC settled charges with Tesla over Elon Musk's bid to take the company private on Saturday.

As part of the settlement, Musk and Tesla will pay $20 million each, and the billionaire will step down as chairman of the board.

The Securities and Exchange Commission settled charges with Tesla CEO Elon Musk over his aborted bid to take the company private, with the billionaire remaining as the helm of the company but relinquishing his chairman title and getting slapped with a hefty fine.

The SEC's enforcement action brings to a conclusion a saga which began in early August, when Musk announced via Twitter that he had secured enough funding for a massive private buyout of Tesla. The original SEC complaint alleged that in doing so, Musk issued "false and misleading" statements, and failed to properly notify regulators of material company events.

As part of the settlement, which is still subject to court approval, Musk will also pay a civil penalty of $20 million and give up his role as chairman of the board for at least three years. Additionally, the SEC imposed a $20 million fine on Tesla itself, which will also be expected to appoint two new independent directors to the board.

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DocM 16,485

So either CTO Jeffrey Straubel, CFO Deepak Ahuja or his brother Kimbal Musk become titular Chairman for 3 years (other 3 largest stockholders.)

Meanwhile; Model 3 power train production has hit 10,000/week and Panasonic is installing more battery cell lines at GigaFactory 1, and more Model 3 assembly robots are on the way from Tesla-Grohmann in Germany.

In Tesla’s Q2 earnings call, Elon Musk discussed some details of the company’s own hardware that is designed specifically for self-driving. The development of Tesla’s homegrown hardware - dubbed Hardware 3 - is led by Pete Bannon, an alumnus of Apple who helped develop the tech giant’s first ARM 32-bit processor that went into the iPhone 5, as well as the first ARM 64-bit processor in the world that went into the iPhone 5S. Bannon notes that his team designed the neural network accelerator that will be part of Hardware 3, as well as Tesla’s AI chip. Musk, for his part, is optimistic about Tesla’s upcoming hardware.

“It’s an incredible job by Pete and his team to create this, the world’s most advanced computer designed specifically for autonomous operation. And as a rough sort, whereas the current NVIDIA’s hardware can do 200 frames a second, this is able to do over 2,000 frames a second and with full redundancy and fail-over. So, it’s an amazing design, and we’re going to be looking to increase the size of our chip team and our investment in that as quickly as possible,” he said.

For the first time, an electric vehicle outsells all but a handful of Toyota and Honda cars.

First it was America's best-selling electric car. Then it became the best-selling luxury car. Now, against the odds, Tesla Inc.'s Model 3 is becoming one of the best-selling sedans in America, period.

Automakers on Tuesday reported monthly and quarterly sales totals. For the three months that ended in September, Tesla delivered more Model 3s than all but four of the top sedans sold in the U.S., regardless of size or price.

It's an imperfect ranking because Tesla didn't break out sales by country, and the Model 3 tally included some deliveries to customers in Canada. And the climb comes at a time when Americans prefer crossovers, SUVs and trucks by an ever-wider margin. Nonetheless, the third-quarter showing was unprecedented for an electric car and a remarkable turnabout for Tesla, which struggled for much of the last year to mass-produce the sedan.

Tesla's Model Y crossover, based on Model 3, gets revealed in a few months. Then comes the Pickup, which also leverages Model 3.

Tesla's competitors are feeling it. Sales of the Mercedes-Benz C-Class, the best-selling luxury sedan in the U.S., plunged 24 percent last month and are down 28 percent for the year through September.

BMW AG's namesake brand barely managed to eke out an increase last month, on the strength of its X3 crossover. "Tesla is now ramping up their volumes, and it's putting pressure on that market segment," Bernhard Kuhnt, chief executive officer of BMW North America, said of the luxury sedan space in an interview Tuesday. "In that environment, I'm very, very pleased to say we were up."
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Draggendrop 5,747

BEIJING (Reuters) - Tesla Inc has signed an agreement with the Shanghai government for an 860,000 square meter plot of land to build its first overseas Gigafactory, the electric carmaker said in a Chinese social media post on Wednesday.

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Quote

Tesla signed a deal with Shanghai authorities in July to open a plant in the Chinese city with an annual capacity of 500,000 cars.

NEV sales were up 54.8 percent in September and climbed 81.1 percent in the first nine months of this year to 721,000 vehicles, the country’s top automobile industry association said last week.

Beijing, however, is reining in subsidies for the sector, concerned about overcapacity and “blind development,” with many inside the industry expecting a shake-out to hit the wide array of smaller local electric car start-ups.

Tesla, which started hiring for the new Shanghai factory in August, previously said that it would raise capital from Asian debt markets to fund the construction, which will cost around $2 billion.